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https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z OPEN Speaking of trauma: the race talk, the gun violence talk, and the racialization of gun trauma

Madison Armstrong1 & Jennifer Carlson1*

ABSTRACT This paper considers the intersection of race and gun violence through the lens of trauma. We focus on two high-profile cases of gun violence: the state-deemed justifiable homicide of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012 and the active shooting

1234567890():,; that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. These cases illustrate not just how people in the US experience gun violence in racially divergent ways (as existing literature suggests) but also how people—particularly parents—manage the anticipation of gun violence and its trauma. To this end, we develop the concept of “anticipatory trauma” and illustrate it by analyzing a set of social practices that have emerged surrounding gun violence: parents’ conversations with their children aimed at explaining and addressing their children’s unique risk of gun violence. Building on existing literature on “the Talk” among African American parents, we analyze a racial bifurcation in how parents talk about gun violence. Specifically, we detail “the Race Talk” (in relation to the Trayvon Martin case) and “the Gun Violence Talk” (in relation to the Parkland case), which differentially construct children’s vulnerability, the social phenomena that render them vul- nerable, and the appropriate solutions for addressing that vulnerability. Without under- standing anticipatory trauma as a racialized phenomenon, we risk leveling the gun violence debate—and creating gun policy that is neither politically meaningful nor practically effective for addressing the broad but complex issue of gun violence.

1 School of Sociology, University of Arizona, Social Sciences Building, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. *email: [email protected]

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Introduction n February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin wanted amid the threat of gun violence. This may mean choosing housing Oto get an Arizona Iced Tea for himself and Skittles for his on the basis of school and neighborhood safety, setting ground soon-to-be younger step-brother. It was dark and rainy, rules for kids’ playdates and extracurricular activities, and even but he made the trek through the Sanford, Florida, gated com- engaging in security consumption, such as buying bulletproof munity known as The Retreat on Twin Lakes. As he made his way backpacks. It also means engaging in particular practices of back from 7–11 after purchasing the items, he dialed his friend talking to kids about gun violence. Indeed, news coverage in the Rachel Jeantel, who was the last person to talk to Martin before he aftermath of gun violence tragedies suggests that while school died. Martin, trying to avoid the rain, noticed someone following shootings and justifiable homicides have incited parents across him: George Zimmerman, self-appointed neighborhood watch racial and socioeconomic divides to talk to their kids about gun captain. From Zimmerman’s perspective, Martin was an unrec- violence, these brands of gun violence have elicited fundamentally ognized black male in a hoodie—suspect, especially amid a recent different strategies among parents as they aim to protect children spate of break-ins in the neighborhood. Despite being advised by physically and emotionally from the anticipated threat of gun police to back off, Zimmerman, complaining to police that “these violence. assholes, they always get away,” decided to follow Martin. Jeantel This paper considers gun violence through the lens of trauma. advised Martin to run; Martin intimated that he was sick of To unravel the trauma that gun violence incites, we focus on two running. Jeantel could hear the sounds of a confrontation, but the high-profile cases of gun violence with markedly different racial phone cut out before Zimmerman shot a bullet into Martin’s dynamics: the state-deemed justifiable homicide of Trayvon chest, killing him. Police questioned Zimmerman, but ultimately Martin on February 26, 2012 and the active shooting that released him; given the state’s Stand Your Ground law, Floridians’ occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb- generally sympathetic stance on the defensive use of force, and ruary 14, 2018. These cases illustrate a number of broader points the fact that Zimmerman was the only witness left to narrate what that scholars have made about trauma, namely, that (1) trauma happened, police found themselves reticent to arrest—so they let is a long-term, dynamic process; (2) trauma is inflected by lines him go. Within about two weeks, the case sparked protests in of difference and inequality, including race, gender, and class; Florida and across the nation. Only after tremendous public and (3) trauma operates as a micro-level, meso-level, and pressure did a special prosecutor notorious for putting African macro-level phenomenon that extends far beyond the immedi- Americans behind bars decide to charge Zimmerman; nearly a ate victims of a traumatic event. We build on this literature to year and a half later, on July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was found further detail the consequences of trauma—not just for under- “not guilty” of all charges by an all-female jury. standing how people in the US experience gun violence in On the afternoon of February 14, 2018, shortly before school racially divergent ways but also how people—particularly par- let out for the day, expelled student Nikolas Cruz entered ents—in the US manage the anticipation of gun violence. To this Building 12 of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in end, we develop the concept of “anticipatory trauma” and Parkland, Florida, carrying a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle. Cruz illustrate it by analyzing a set of social practices that have began firing the gun; its smoke set off the fire alarm, sending emerged surrounding gun violence: parents’ conversations with confused students and faculty into the hallways. Cruz fired into their children aimed at explaining and addressing their chil- multiple classrooms as students and staff, realizing what was dren’s unique risk of gun violence. We then turn to the coverage happening, desperately tried to take shelter or escape the campus. of the Trayvon Martin and Parkland cases to unpack how par- Within the span of 6 min, Cruz killed seventeen people and ents’ gun violence talk is mobilized across different kinds of gun injured another seventeen in and around the high school. He violence. Rather than an empirically exhaustive account, we take abandoned his weapon and escaped the building by blending in a theoretically motivated reading of mainstream news outlets’ with students fleeing the gunfire. Cruz then visited a nearby coverage of these parental talks in order to develop a set of Walmart, purchased a drink from a Subway, and briefly entered a claims regarding anticipatory trauma, gun violence, and race. McDonalds before being apprehended by police while walking Specifically, we analyzed op-ed pieces from national and local through a neighborhood over an hour after the shootings. Cruz news sources that referenced either the Trayvon Martin case or confessed to the shootings and was ultimately charged with the Parkland case directly and discussed speaking to children seventeen counts of premeditated murder in the first degree and about either event or gun violence more generally. News sources seventeen counts of attempted murder in the first degree; as of the examined included The Washington Post, The New York Times, writing of this article, the case has yet to go to trial. Although The Atlantic, CNN, ABC News, NBC News, USA Today, Today, scholarship shows that the majority of mass murders are carried The Huffington Post, NPR, The Baltimore Sun, The South Florida out by young, middle-class white men (Fox and Levin, 1998; Sun Sentinel,andMy San Antonio. All articles were published Madfis, 2014), the attack came as a shock to the affluent, pre- between the date of the event which they referenced (the dominately white Parkland community, destabilizing the com- shooting of Martin on February 26, 2012 and the Parkland munity’s sense of safety. Within one day of the Parkland shootings on February 14, 2018) and March 2019. Op-ed topics shootings, members of the community, including those who were were sorted into themes pertaining to perceptions of danger, not affiliated with the high school, began protesting in favor of precautions taken against violence, perception of authority, gun violence prevention. maintenance of emotions, and institutional support (or lack In the US, nearly 40,000 people die of gunshot wounds thereof). Often resembling “how to” guides for worried parents, annually; nearly 100,000 are wounded every year. These figures these news articles can be understood as theoretically generative are overwhelming, but still they greatly underestimate who is social texts that “bear witness” to social injury (Eyerman, 2019) impacted by gun violence, how, and with what consequences. and, as such, provide a window into cultural trauma sur- Extrapolating from these figures suggests that hundreds of rounding gun violence. thousands of friends and family experience trauma as they cope We find that parents’ talk about gun violence entrenches racial with casualties due to firearms—and hundreds of thousands more differences in not only understanding but also responding to gun experience trauma as they anticipate gun violence in their streets, violence as an everyday threat. In other words, we suggest that at home, and in their schools. Parents of diverse backgrounds are anticipatory trauma acts as a vehicle of racialization. In doing so, proactively concerned with how to manage their children’s safety we build on existing literature on “the Talk” among African

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American parents (Dow, 2016; Gonzales, 2019), and we detail a Further, race shapes how trauma is experienced in the after- racial bifurcation in the ways anticipatory trauma is engaged math of gun violence for those who survive it. “Traumatic events” through two racially distinct practices of parental talk. Specifi- are often considered to be drastic and shocking departures from cally, we detail the “the Race Talk” (in relation to the Trayvon the norm of everyday life, including incidents such as witnessing a Martin case) and “the Gun Violence Talk” (in relation to the violent death, loss of a loved one (particularly through violent Parkland case), which differentially construct children’s vulner- means), and single occurrence or prolonged abuse (Alexander, ability, the social phenomena that render them vulnerable, and 2012; Herman, 2015; Morrison and Casper, 2012). As Eyerman the appropriate solutions for addressing that vulnerability. Both (2019, p. 89) describes, talks are implicitly racialized in that they both depend on racially fi “trauma” here in its common meaning as the impact of divergent presumptions regarding social support, personal ef - ’ cacy, and risk in society, but the explicitness of their racial politics shocking occurrences that profoundly affect an individual s life. Such “inner catastrophes” leave wounds and memory is different: following the politics of colorblindness, the Race Talk fl explicitly frames gun violence as a problem of race, but in ways scars that cannot easily be erased and that in uence later that tend to particularize gun violence associated with racially and behavior in unexpected and unpredictable ways. socioeconomically marginalized people as a “problem of race.” In Sociologists, psychologists, and other scholars have parsed contrast, the Gun Violence Talk generalizes the trauma associated trauma as an individual, collective and cultural phenomenon. with racially and socioeconomically privileged people as a “pro- Individual trauma is described as psychological trauma stemming blem of gun violence.” from some specific traumatic event that affects an individual Similarly motivated by children’s vulnerability to gun violence, either directly, as in cases of physical abuse, or indirectly, as in the the racially divergent ways in which “the Talk” emerges in the aftermath of the loss of a loved one. Collective traumas are aftermath of these high-profile gun tragedies illustrate how the defined as those that affect many people who belong to the same anticipatory trauma of gun violence is lived as an everyday, cultural group or collectivity (Alexander, 2012; Eyerman, 2013; racialized politics embedded in homes and families across the US, Herman, 2015; McGuffey, 2005); similar to individual trauma, above and beyond direct experiences with gun violence. We collective trauma is born of a specific event and negatively conclude by inverting our original concern—how gun violence impacts not only the psyche of the individual people within the shapes trauma—to consider how trauma shapes gun violence, at collectivity, but also the bonds between its members (Erikson, least insofar as trauma can impact how we talk about, debate, and 1976; Eyerman, 2013). Trauma may result in psychological con- ultimately develop policies that impact gun violence. Anticipatory ditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post- trauma is a mechanism by which certain acts of gun violence are traumatic stress disorder, a prolonged recovery process, and/or defined as “really” about certain social problems (e.g., race or gun the embodiment of physical symptoms or effects of the traumatic violence) and not others; it is a mechanism by which certain event. Homicide survivors are likely to experience psychological experiences of gun violence become hypervisible versus invisible; and physical effects (Hertz and Chery, 2005), and mothers are and finally, it is a mechanism by which polities are rallied and particularly likely to bear “multiple burdens” of being aggrieved policies drafted. Thus, without understanding anticipatory by the loss of a loved one to homicide, stigmatized by virtue of trauma as a racialized phenomenon, we risk leveling the gun their social proximity to a homicide victim, and expected, within violence debate—and creating gun policy that is neither politically their social networks, to ameliorate the trauma of other survivors meaningful nor practically effective for addressing the broad but (Bailey et al., 2013; Melendez et al., 2016). Scholarship shows that complex issue of gun violence. exposure to gun violence (even if not directly victimized) is dis- proportionately concentrated in poor communities of color, and it shapes mental health, long-term physical health, cognitive The traumatic terrain of US gun violence abilities, and even friendship structures (Chan Tack and Small, More Americans have died by guns since 1968 than have died in 2017; Sharkey, 2010; Sharkey et al., 2012). Further, individual and wars across US history. Gun violence costs an average of $700 per collective traumas may serve to reinforce one another and may year per American. From death counts to lost productivity, also be connected with cultural trauma (Eyerman, 2019). countless statistics and figures communicate the sheer enormity Cultural trauma is central for understanding the broad effects of gun violence in the US. Each, however, conceals a great deal of of gun violence in the US. Rather than emerging in the aftermath variation within gun violence. The majority of gun deaths are of a close brush with a traumatic event, cultural trauma describes suicides, which are disproportionately white men; about 10,000 the processes by which collective memories are narrated as felonious gun homicides occur every year, and African American trauma to mediate collective identity (Eyerman, 2019; see also boys and men are disproportionately likely to be both perpe- Smelser, 2004): “to become a cultural trauma, an event or situa- trators and victims of this form of gun violence. African Amer- tion must not only be disorienting but must also get defined and ican boys and men are also disproportionately likely to be killed narrated as trauma” (Onwuachi-Willig, 2016, p. 339, citing in justifiable homicides: suggestive of the weapons bias, whereby Eyerman, 2015). Drawing on broadly held ideas about identity, objects associated with darker-skinned people are more likely to injury, belonging and blameworthiness, cultural trauma is distinct be quickly identified as guns than objects associated with lighter- from collective trauma and individual trauma in at least three skinned people (Payne, 2006), white-on-black homicides are ways. First, cultural trauma is a discursive process that is chan- more likely to be ruled justifiable in states with Stand Your neled through social institutions shaped by race and gender, Ground policies (Roman, 2013). According to Washington Post including existing social supports (particularly racial disparities in and FBI Uniform Crime Report data, every year roughly 1300 the resources and tools available to individuals and communities people die in justifiable homicides by civilians and law enforce- experiencing trauma); the responsiveness of the existing struc- ment (Tate et al., 2016). Finally, among active shootings that tures, such as the political and legal system, to grievances (poli- involve a shooter indiscriminately killing in a public and/or tical institutions, for example, tend to be more responsive to populated area, whites are more represented as both perpetrators claims by privileged claims-makers); and the racial narratives of (who are almost exclusively white boys and men) and victims, blameworthiness and criminality (especially in the case of trauma and, according to an analysis by The Guardian, active shootings due to violent death) that shape the meaning—for survivors and occur, on average, 9 out of 10 days in the US (Morris, 2018). beyond—of these traumatic deaths. Second, cultural trauma can

PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms 3 ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z disrupt temporality with respect to traumatic events. As Schmidt The responsiveness of political and legal channels. Intersecting (2014) shows, cultural trauma may emerge not just in the after- with disparities in social supports in the aftermath of gun vio- math of a particular event but also in anticipation of such an lence, the survivors of the Trayvon Martin and Parkland tragedies event, an anticipation that is likely to draw on stylized narratives also experienced divergences in the responsiveness of political of blameworthiness, victimhood, and injury shaped. Finally, as and legal channels to their demands for justice and restitution. Onwuachi-Willig (2016) importantly argues, cultural trauma For Trayvon Martin’s family, grief and justice were counterposed: describes not just disturbing disruptions to the routine; cultural Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, recounts having to grapple with trauma also can emerge from routinized harm perpetrated against the immediate reality that “just hearing a father’s cry isn’t going a subordinated group when it is recognized in the public arena to do it” when it comes to bringing justice; Sybrina Fulton, and sanctioned or reinforced by government and legal forces. The Martin’s mother, initially struggled with the traumatic loss of her perpetration of gun violence by police and private civilians child by withdrawing. But Martin’s parents had to make a choice, against Black individuals in the United States is a key example of Crump insisted: “either you choose to grieve, or you choose to this; it is a routinized harm against a marginalized group of which fight.” And, Crump continued, “if you choose to grieve, it’s over. the public at large is aware and which is frequently discussed by Nothing happens to the killer of your child.” If they chose to media outlets, but which is also tacitly or explicitly sanctioned by grieve, they failed their son and other victims of justifiable the government and legal forces (Onwuachi-Willig, 2016). Thus, homicide. If they chose to fight, they necessarily made their own cultural trauma provides key analytical insights for understanding struggle to grieve more difficult, especially if they lost the fight. how gun violence induces trauma in its aftermath and in its The strategy of turning to activism after a traumatic event has a anticipation, and how this bi-directional relationship between significant history among Black mothers, particularly in the trauma and gun violence is shaped by the racial disparities in how aftermath of the violent deaths of their children (Al’Uqdah and gun violence is experienced and understood. Adomako, 2018; Armour, 2002; Bailey et al., 2013; Price, 2017). Framing the case around issues of racial inequality, civil rights fi Racializing gun violence-related trauma and anti-racist activists mobilized rst for the arrest of Zim- merman, then for his conviction, and finally against his acquittal To illustrate how race shapes trauma, we first consider the two under the banner of #BlackLivesMatter. Ultimately, however, cases—the killing of Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012 and these activists lost the battle for justice in the courts: Martin’s the Parkland Shooting on February 14, 2018—across three axes killing was followed by the “not guilty” verdict, which acted as a that shape trauma in the aftermath of gun violence: (1) social double trauma. First, it was a reminder that Black bodies are not supports, (2) the responsiveness of the political and legal systems safe from physical harm, and second, a rejoinder that Black to the grievances of survivors, and (3) racial narratives of bodies are not worthy of legal redress. blameworthiness and criminality. Whereas Martin’s family fought to raise political and legal questions about Martin’s death, Parkland students were eagerly Social support. The survivors of the Trayvon Martin and Park- embraced as the next generation of gun violence activists, and the land tragedies navigated racially disparate contexts of social legal system quickly moved to arrest and charge the shooter. support. The Parkland tragedy was met with an immediate out- Schmidt (2014) explains that anticipatory trauma may be pouring of public support and resources, including counseling mobilized to promote collective action aimed at preempting and mental health services, memorials, and public commemora- perceived threat. Following the Parkland shootings, individuals tion. Within days, public events were held to provide space for (particularly white individuals) who had perhaps not considered families and friends to grieve and process the tragedy, and make- the possibility of facing gun violence previously began to shift shrines were soon erected—and preserved for weeks—at experience a level of anticipatory trauma that spurred them to Pine Trails Park nearby. Other memorials would take longer to action. Many of the students and parents who faced individual erect; in early 2019, a “Project Grow Love” memorial garden was traumas in the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas shootings unveiled on the school’s campus. Such resources should not turned to activism focused on gun violence prevention as a way of suggest that the enduring trauma that survivors experienced was processing trauma and attempting to make meaning out of the resolutely addressed; for instance, when two students who sur- event. Parents also engaged in activism on behalf of the children vived the attack died by suicide around the one-year anniversary they lost. In contrast with Martin’s family, the Parkland activists of the killing, some criticized the memorial services, saying that were given immense political capital. With the help of well- students had been “expected to brush aside our grief and deep connected, big-dollar funders like actor George Clooney, several mental wounds.” In response, Broward County officials met to students from the school became essential in organizing and discuss further supporting students and reminded the community promoting the March for Our Lives, a gun violence prevention of resources in the form of resiliency centers and crisis hotlines. march that was held in Washington, D.C. a month after the Even these generous resources proved inadequate to the tall Parkland shootings, as well as a nationwide activism tour in the task of resolving complex trauma. And so we must remember that summer of 2018. As Dave Cullen (2019) documents in his book most gun tragedies do not warrant such an outpouring. Before his Parkland, these largely suburban, affluent, and mostly white parents—with the help of their lawyer, Benjamin Crump— students came face-to-face with racial disparities in the respon- transformed his death into a public cause, Trayvon Martin’s siveness of political channels; joining with activists of color homicide was largely invisible to the public at large, and his death involved in fighting urban gun violence in Chicago, Parkland did not warrant any specially organized resources in the form of activists openly and explicitly emphasized that all kids deserved to mental health counseling or other social supports, not least live in a world as they realized that their privileged racial and class because his death was deemed “justifiable”. Martin was not just status made their calls to end gun violence more politically salient killed but also criminalized. The violent deaths of African than the claims of less privileged kids facing gun violence. American boys and men, as writers such as Jill Leovy and Alex Kotlowitz show, are more likely to pass unnoticed by the public and are largely perfunctorily engaged by legal authorities. As Narratives of blameworthiness and criminality. In both cases, such, Martin’s family was effectively left to navigate the legal and trauma was shaped—both for survivors and for broader com- emotional aftermath of their son’s death on their own. munities—by the racial narratives of blameworthiness and

4 PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z ARTICLE criminality that shaped how perpetrators and victims in the two received heightened public view in the aftermath of the Trayvon cases were understood. As the Trayvon Martin killing become Martin and Parkland tragedies, what we call “the Race Talk” and publicly defined as a tragedy of race rather than a tragedy of gun “the Gun Violence Talk”. violence, activists questioned how Martin’s racial status con- tributed to his being framed as the “real” aggressor and Zim- merman as the “real” victim. Zimmerman’s acquittal made visible Anticipatory trauma the deep racial divides surrounding these narratives of blame- In recent years, the American market has seen an influx of pro- worthiness and criminality in the US: nearly half of whites (49%) ducts meant to protect schoolchildren in the event of an active polled in a Pew (2013) survey said they were “satisfied” with the shooter scenario. There have been multiple iterations of the outcome, while the vast majority of African Americans (86%) bulletproof backpack, and a 14-year-old student made national were “dissatisfied.” For many whites, the case may have been news after inventing a collapsible bulletproof wall that could be merely another murder trial; for African Americans, it was a expanded to cover a classroom door (Smith and Tang, 2018). reckoning with the realities of being Black in America. Referen- Schools participate in frequent lockdown drills, training students cing the Emmett Till murder, protesters noted with anger that to silently duck under desks and climb into closets should an “Only in America must a Black boy stand trial for his own active shooter enter the building. Protective measures and murder,” while then-President Obama acknowledged the cruelty security consumption signal the constant fear and anxiety that with which skin color criminalizes Black boys, saying “If I had a has accompanied the potential threat of school-based gun vio- son, he’d look like Trayvon.” As powerful as such statements were lence since the school shooting at Columbine in the late 1990s. in calling attention to the lethal consequences of race in America The 20th century had already brought an increase in social and the racial terror that African Americans navigate as a con- anxieties surrounding children and childhood innocence; as risk dition of their everyday lives, these statements tended to reinforce scholars Jackson and Scott (1999, p. 86) note, “childhood is the message that the case mattered first and foremost to Black increasingly being constructed as a precious realm under siege by Americans, rather than Americans more generally. In addition, those who would rob children of their childhoods, and as being the case served as a reminder of the particular precarity of being a subverted from within by children who refuse to remain child- Black boy in America—the language referring to sons and boys like.” Into the 21st century, the threat of active shootings in reflects the gendering of gun violence, especially gun-related schools compounded these anxieties, fueling new industries, new justifiable homicides, which disproportionately impact Black boys political discourses, and new policies and practices. and men (see Gonzalez, 2019). At the heart of these developments is the anticipation of In contrast, the Parkland shooting—like mass shootings more trauma. We use “anticipatory trauma” to refer to practices and generally—was framed as an attack on “normal kids” doing discourses grounded in fear of disasters, large-scale threats, and “normal things” and, as such, an attack on white, middle-class sudden violence by those exposed via media but not yet directly American life. The victims in this case are distinctly degendered; affected (Houston, 2009; Pfefferbaum et al., 2014). Psychologists unlike in the Trayvon Martin case, the rhetoric focuses on the have used terms such as “anticipatory stress reaction” and “pre- gender-neutral “schoolchildren,” seemingly made precarious only traumatic stress disorder” to signal the similarity in psychological by their proximity to schools. The activist efforts of the parents of states—“negative affect, depression, anxiety, stress, neuroticism, victims and student survivors were not constructed as a racialized and repetitive negative thinking” (Hopwood et al., 2019, p. 1427) response to trauma, unlike the activist efforts of Black mothers.1 —in individuals impacted by the fear of future events as com- Notably, even the shooter was deracialized and degendered: the pared to those impacted by their aftermath. Our development of shooter’s race and gender were not described by media outlets as “anticipatory trauma” builds on these insights but signals a potential contributing factors to his violence. Although the sociological shift; rather than the psychological states associated shooter was reported by several media outlets to have vocalized with this anticipation, we are interested in socially patterned explicitly white supremacist and misogynistic sentiments on his practices and discourses to manage it. social media accounts, public tropes surrounding the shooter Active shootings reflect one powerful site to investigate gun characterized him as a mentally unstable individual who had violence-based anticipatory trauma, but they are not the only “fallen through the cracks,” rather than someone driven by a venue. For decades, Black parents have dealt with the anticipation white supremacist, misogynistic masculinity. For our purposes of violence against their children, particularly their sons, through here, the point is not that he should have been framed differently, gun violence carried out during interactions with law enforce- but rather that he could have been framed differently and was not. ment and other violent actors who perceive Black children as As such, the shooting did not expose racial divides but rather threats. To protect their children and prepare them for the pos- generalized the experience of the Parkland students to that of sibility that someone may attempt to harm them, Black parents American kids’ experiences of gun violence. The debate was not engage their children in discussions about self-policing and about whether the students were “really” victims and the shooter behavior modification, otherwise known as “the Talk.” Active was “really” an aggressor, but about whether to protect American shootings have inspired a new form of the Talk, one that white lives by decreasing gun violence or to maintain American ideals parents now participate in when attempting to protect their by promoting gun rights. school-age children. In this paper, we theoretically unravel these Thus far, we have compared the racialized experiences of parental talks as illustrations of racialized anticipatory trauma. trauma incited by the Trayvon Martin and Parkland tragedies With justifiable homicide deaths disproportionately borne by insofar as racial dynamics shape the resources, legal and political communities whose pain is disproportionately devalued (see, for responses, and cultural tropes available to survivors. We use this example, the racial empathy gap; Trawalter, Hoffman and Waytz, as a foundation to further tease apart how racialized trauma 2012), people—particularly parents—cope with the anticipatory shapes how people in the US experience and expect everyday gun trauma of their children being racially stereotyped as threats by violence. engaging in the Talk: an informal set of guidelines on how to Indeed, while the likelihood of gun violence victimization is dress and comport oneself; how to interact with peers, adults, and shaped by race, class, and gender, parents across these social especially the police in public; and how to modify one’s behavior divides nevertheless take proactive approaches to anticipate depending on the time of day and the neighborhood. The Talk trauma. We isolate two forms of anticipatory trauma that functions as an attempt to mitigate the powerlessness parents

PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms 5 ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z may feel when reminded that, although their children face con- their own physical safety. Second, and accordingly, the Race Talk stant potential danger due to racial stereotyping, they cannot be assumes a cultural context in which non-white bodies are constantly present to physically protect their kids from harm inherently devalued and survival is an active goal rather than a (Whitaker and Snell, 2016). Mothers in one study (Dow, 2016) likely outcome. Lives must be vigorously defended and main- mourned the choice: to engage in the Talk in the hopes of keeping tained; living beyond young adulthood cannot necessarily be their kids alive was also to take away their childhood innocence— assumed, and precautions—oftentimes embodied behaviors— a reality of which white Americans were largely ignorant. Fur- must be undertaken against potential dangers. The Gun Violence thermore, the Talk, as Gonzalez (2019) details in her study, Talk takes the opposite approach; it is not explicitly racialized or reflects an intersectional understanding of danger, conceptualiz- focused on embodiment as the primary cause of violence or ing boys of color as the primary targets of police violence, while precaution against it. Instead, it focuses primarily on managing de-emphasizing not just girls and women of color as the victims children’s emotions in anticipation of school-based active shooter of violence but also the kinds of violence, especially sexual and scenarios, reinforcing that the behaviors of the children are not intimate partner violence, disproportionately likely to affect them. responsible for violence done against them. Finally, the Gun With new discussions arising around active shootings, white Violence Talk is distinct from the Race Talk with regard to the Americans are beginning to face the same dilemmas; parents structures of support provided to parents for orchestrating the must make a choice between maintaining childhood innocence talk itself; while the Race Talk stems from embodied knowledge and providing their children with potentially life-saving infor- and has been passed down generationally with little to no support mation. While the Talk has typically been understood in terms of from formal institutions, the Gun Violence Talk has emerged racial disadvantage, it is also pertinent to consider it in terms of from institutional efforts to address active shootings, including racial advantage. How is the threat of gun violence differently many government and media publications focused on providing constructed from the perspective of advantage as opposed to parents with resources for talking with their children. disadvantage? Who has the ability to sustain childhood inno- cence, with what tools, and at what cost? Who has the privilege to — The race talk and the gun violence talk as racialized choose how to talk to their children about gun violence or to not anticipatory trauma talk to them at all? As parallel forms of carework, the Race Talk and the Gun Vio- What we term “the Race Talk” teaches Black children to avoid lence Talk reflect two racially distinctive social structures in gun violence through self-policing and de-escalation measures which the anticipatory trauma of gun violence is addressed. The meant to avoid being perceived as a potential threat to a would-be Race Talk presumes social disorganization, including depressed shooter. White children are taught through “the Gun Violence resources, gutted expectations about life chances, and anemic Talk” that their own behavior is not the problem and cannot curb institutional support, while the Gun Violence Talk presumes potential threats; rather, avoiding gun violence is dependent on social organization, including available resources, expectations understanding how to physically protect oneself from an active about a future life trajectory, and some semblance of institutional shooter. The two talks are differentiated based both on the support. structural contexts in which they occur and by the differently racialized language of affect and care that accompanies each. See Table 1. Presumptions and precaution regarding children’s safety. The First, the Gun Violence Talk is distinct from the Race Talk with specific language and rhetoric used within the Gun Violence Talk regard to the presumptions regarding children’s safety. The Gun and the Race Talk differ significantly. The language of the Gun Violence talk helps to reassure children that they are primarily Violence Talk focuses primarily on reinforcing the idea of safety safe and that the authority figures around them will protect them. and maintaining childhood innocence and emotional stability, Precautions like lockdown drills are structured through a play- while the language of the Race Talk enforces a sense of danger, type lens that allows children to separate drills from reality and focusing on self-policing and privileging embodied safety over maintain their sense of safety. The Race Talk, on the other hand, innocence and emotion. centers on a sense of impending peril and constant danger; there The maintenance of childhood innocence is exemplified is no space for play-type language, because playing in a racialized through the differential preparedness mechanisms that inform body can easily be interpreted as threatening by law enforcement these Talks. School lockdown and active shooter drills are and other authorities. Rather than emphasizing reliance on frequently precursors to the Gun Violence Talk. In many schools, authority figures to maintain safety, the Race Talk necessarily especially for younger children, active shooter drills are reminds Black children that authority figures may, in fact, be reimagined in order to make them less scary for children. Rather sources of danger, and that Black people must rely on themselves than telling children that they are having an active shooter drill, and the policing of their own behaviors for the maintenance of teachers may explain that they are hiding from a dangerous animal intruder, like a bear or a tiger that has gotten loose in the school (Christakis, 2019; Hamblin, 2019; Dvorak, 2018). Alter- Table 1 Anticipatory Trauma: The Gun Violence Talk and the natively, they may tell children that it is time for a “hiding game Race Talk or quiet time drill” (Coppa, 2018)ora“self-control drill” (Hamblin, 2019), encourage students to create a barricade in The Gun Violence Talk The Race Talk front of the door by stacking chairs “like a fort” (Christakis, Safety as norm Danger as norm 2019), or practice singing lockdown instructions to the tune of Precautions as play Precautions as peril “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (Christakis, 2019). By reimagining Authority as caring Authority as threatening active shooter drills through the lens of play, teachers attempt to Emotions as inherently valuable and Bodies as inherently devalued and avoid potential traumatization and maintain a level of childhood protected imperiled innocence in their students. Passive management of emotions Active management of Black parents giving the Race Talk are not afforded play-type embodiment Grounded in formal institution Grounded in informal community lenses through which to frame their attempts at preparing their efforts practice children to face danger. One of the main points of the Race Talk is to explain to Black boys and young men that even actions that

6 PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z ARTICLE seem innocent may be used as an excuse by someone who wants communities to situate the shooter as an outsider rather than a to perpetrate violence against them. Trayvon Martin was deemed community member, making space for the recuperation of the “suspicious” and subsequently killed by George Zimmerman image of the community. while simply attempting to walk home at night after purchasing Rather than framing violence that has occurred as a problem snacks at a nearby store; he “died with a package of Skittles in his from other communities that has suddenly and shockingly pocket” (Owens, 2012). Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and invaded one’s own, the Race Talk discusses violence as a pervasive killed by white police officer Timothy Loehmann for playing with issue that could equally impact nearly any community. The Race a toy gun in a park (Ly and Hanna, 2014). There is seemingly no Talk avoids the “how could it ever happen here” language used in end to the examples that could be provided. And so a key aspect the Gun Violence Talk, instead recognizing that even in—and of the Race Talk is Black parents explaining how even the most perhaps especially in—neighborhoods that are considered safe or innocent, playful behaviors may be viewed by white people and/ affluent, there is still significant danger for Black men (Person, or law enforcement as threatening or criminal. The Race Talk has 2013; Washington, 2012). Here, explicitly naming the perpetrator no room for introducing an element of play as a mechanism for is a method of assigning responsibility, as well as attempting to the maintenance of innocence, because it must address the reality ensure justice. In the aftermath of many school shootings, the of violence and explain how innocence itself may be dangerous. perpetrator is either dead or has been apprehended by police, and As Bryan Adamson (2013) writes, “Even a man of color’s most there is little to no question of whether they will be held benign behavior won’t save him.” responsible. In cases like the shooting of Trayvon Martin (or These different approaches to maintaining innocence also Tamir Rice, or Mike Brown…), reminding individuals of the manifest in the ways danger and safety are discussed in the Gun name of the perpetrator is one attempt to guarantee justice for the Violence Talk and the Race Talk. The Gun Violence Talk and victim. The naming of the perpetrator does not replace the accompanying drills place primary emphasis on safety and the naming of victims, on whom social media movements like maintenance of schools as safe spaces for children. Guides #SayHerName and #SayTheirNames focus, but instead declines to encourage parents to frame schools within the Gun Violence Talk allow perpetrators to fade from public narratives. as spaces that are primarily safe but may experience rare, random violence (Turner, 2018). They encourage parents to emphasize safety measures that are already in place in schools and are not in Embodied survival, emotional management. In the aftermath of any way dependent on the behaviors of the children (e.g., locked the killing of Trayvon Martin, news outlets popularized a long- school doors and the presence of authority figures; Castro- standing practice within Black families: “the Talk,” or what we Villarreal, 2018). Parents encourage children to remember that critically label in this paper “the Race Talk,” aimed at informing they are safe in schools and that the likelihood of having an active Black children—and especially Black boys—of their embodied shooter scenario is very low. precarity. Described as a “rite of passage for black boys in The Race Talk cannot emphasize safety as primary and danger America” (Parker, 2012), the Race Talk situates parents as the as secondary. Black parents must explain to their children that instructors of an impossible lesson: explaining racism and its danger is not particularly unlikely, and that in order to maintain imminent dangers to children (Dow, 2016). Balancing exposure safety, children must “self-police” their behaviors (Adamson, to the “complexities of the world” (E. Thomas, 2013) with the 2013). The responsibility for safety, rather than being placed in need to allow children to be children, parents are often described the hands of authority figures near the children, is placed with the as having to explain that “some things are not going to be fair” (E. children themselves. Authority figures are not a source of comfort Thomas, 2013); that “politeness” won’t save children from judg- but a primary source of potential danger. A parent’s wish to ment (Parker, 2012); and that “far too often, the justice system maintain a child’s feeling of safety is necessarily eclipsed by the and our society see our boys as disposable and dispensable” need to make children aware of the persistent potential for deadly (Person, 2013). A practice engaged by parents, the Race Talk is violence. nevertheless embedded in a distinctive social structure that shapes The Gun Violence Talk and the Race Talk address violence that its contours as carework. has occurred in distinct ways. After an active shooting in a school, The Race Talk reflects the social disorganization that much of the resulting debate focuses on the shocking and rare disproportionately characterizes racialized communities (Ander- nature of the event and “otherizes” the concept of school son, 2012). In such structural contexts, survival is not an shootings; “I just didn’t think this could ever happen here” is assumption but an achievement, and coming of age is not repeated in many different forms by many different people. growing up but surviving. As such, parents find themselves less Following the Parkland Shooting, the South Florida Sun Sentinel concerned with how to cultivate their children’s selves (as in published an article in which the author stated that “Fears that middle-class and white households), instead focusing on the have seemed distant are now on our doorstep” (Jhon, 2018). For basics of day-to-day survival. Such survival is not simply curtailed Parkland in particular, a low-violence, high-income city near by lacking resources but also by the authority figures (such as Miami, a school shooting was considered by residents to be police) who are putatively worthy of trust and legitimacy yet especially jarring and surprising. The all-American perfection aggravate and undermine children’s capacity for survival. As one maintained by this city intentionally designed to feel like an columnist notes, “parents of black and brown children bear the oversized park was shaken by the realization that even it was not chilling burden of instructing them how to behave, places to immune to school shootings. This shock was furthered by the avoid, what to wear or not wear and what to say or not say in the failure of the authority figures–specifically school resource face of law enforcement” (Adamson, 2013). Emphasizing that officers–this community had trusted to intervene and maintain Black boys must anticipate the reality of malice (whether of police safety. In an effort to recuperate the vision of the community that officers, merchants, or the private civilian), parents are situated as individuals held before the school shooting, there were calls for experts in the embodied tactics of self-policing that Black children media and politicians to neglect to name the perpetrator in their are encouraged to adopt. The social apparatus of care that coverage and discussions of the event. This was purportedly to undergirds the Race Talk is rooted in the everyday tactics that prevent the shooter from gaining the notoriety they may have parents and other adult community members have long been looking for and to encourage people to instead remember perfected; as one columnist notes, “I’m an avid tennis player. the victims, but it also served the secondary purpose of allowing When I used to drive to the court, I would toss my wallet into the

PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms 7 ARTICLE PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z glove compartment when I got into the car. But, ever wary of recommend not talking to younger children about shootings at DWB (Driving While Black), long ago I decided to keep my all, operating under the assumption that only older children are wallet on the passenger’s seat. There’s always a chance that I’ll get likely to have been exposed to news coverage (Jhon, 2018; pulled over by an anxious, overly aggressive or even racist officer, Holohan, 2019). Some parents advise never giving children a and if I reach for the glove compartment to get my driver’s dedicated Gun Violence Talk; instead, they argue for listening to license, my fingertips may never reach their destination” (R. the specific concerns of children and responding directly to those Thomas, 2013). particular concerns as they arise (Bland, 2018). Other guides In contrast, the Gun Violence Talk tends to focus on risk suggest not broaching the Gun Violence Talk until the child management—not unlike “disaster preparedness.” News cover- approaches a parent and is adequately emotionally prepared age, for example, compares active shooting drills to “natural- (Jhon, 2018; Turner, 2018; Castro-Villarreal, 2018). The possibi- disaster and Cold War drills… exposing kids to the idea that at lity of violence is counterweighed by the prospect of stripping any point, someone they know may try to kill them” (Hamblin, childhood innocence; guides for giving the Gun Violence Talk are 2019). However, articles often stress the drills themselves as structured with the intent of maintaining innocence as long as traumatizing, expressing concern not over the life-or-death stakes possible and pushing off the Gun Violence Talk indefinitely, at play (as in the Race Talk) but rather over children’s emotional dependent on the vague future emotional preparedness of the states, asking, for example, “what are the longer-term effects on child. This is facilitated by the prospect of a future expiration date the children’s health and development?” Such a question seems on the sense of impending doom; while active shooter scenarios almost a luxury in the context of the Race Talk but comprises a occur outside of schools and gun violence is pervasive in arenas central aspect of Gun Violence coverage. As such, parents are other than active shootings, the particular scenario of school encouraged, as one news article summarized, to “remind children shootings, which most of the guides address directly, is only a and teens that, in spite of the headlines, schools are still the safest specter while children are actively attending school. place for them to be” and that drills should be designed to For Black boys facing racially motivated gun violence, there is counteract feelings of powerlessness that children have in the no alternative option. There is no expiration date on the potential aftermath of a widely covered school shooting in order to “help a violence faced by Black boys and men. The Race Talk is not child feel safer but also give her a sense of agency.” Indeed, some optional but imperative, and it will inform their behaviors for the coverage even insists that “the drills themselves aren’t inherently rest of their lives. Fear of stripping a child of their innocence is scary” (Coppa, 2018), and parents talking to children about active not enough to outweigh the necessity of the Race Talk (E. shootings can help quell any associated anxieties. Thomas, 2013; R. Thomas, 2013). The Race Talk is passed parent- Accordingly, parents engaging in the Gun Violence Talk are to-child through multiple generations in Black families (Gandbhir encouraged to mine their children’s emotions, help children to and Foster, 2015; Washington, 2012). It was described in one view their environments as safe despite news reports that suggest instance as “more essential than gas money,” (Person, 2013); in otherwise, and even engage in therapeutic tactics (e.g., “Encou- another instance, an author stated that “a black parent who rage them to talk about how they’re feeling. Be alert to signs of doesn’t give ‘the talk’ to a teen-aged boy is guilty of negligence,” anxiety. Practice ways to reduce stress. Take a walk, do deep (R. Thomas, 2013). Unlike white parents constructing the Gun breathing exercises. Maintain routines”; Bland, 2018). Whereas Violence Talk, Black parents receive little to no formalized the Race Talk encourages kids to modify their embodiment in institutional support for the Race Talk. Major media outlets do order to physically survive, the Gun Violence Talk encourages not provide Black parents with step-by-step guides for discussing kids to manage their emotions. Perhaps this is because of a final danger with their children or nuanced, age-appropriate versions key structural difference between the contexts in which the Race of the Race Talk. Black parents rely on first-hand and second- Talk and the Gun Violence Talk occur: rather than first-hand or hand experiences to shape their narrative. secondhand experiences—which drive the Race Talk—the Gun These structural elements combine with rhetorical elements to Violence Talk revolves around addressing events and tragedies make the Talks a uniquely racialized form of carework that is co- that, while widely reported and broadly known, are nevertheless constituted with anticipatory trauma. The anticipatory trauma experienced vicariously, either through news reports or active experienced by parents leads to the decision to either pass shooter drills. anticipatory trauma on to children as a way of making them alert to danger and keeping them safe, or to attempt to prevent passing anticipatory trauma on to children in order to shield them from Optional talks, unwitting experts. In the aftermath of the emotional discomfort and loss of innocence. Who actually is able Parkland Shooting, news coverage included commentary from to choose between these options is divided along racial lines; anxious parents, but it also broadly consulted professionals and while white parents have the privilege of choosing to hold experts—psychologists, counselors, security specialists—in order anticipatory trauma within themselves and withhold the Gun to apprehend the “best practices” of discussing active shootings Violence Talk from their children, Black parents view the Race with children. Many media outlets have published guides to help Talk as an urgent necessity and therefore must pass on their parents better navigate discussing active shootings while center- anticipatory trauma to make their children actively aware of how ing the children’s emotional wellbeing; these frequently provide their bodies may be a site for danger. recommendations for age-appropriate topics to discuss with different-aged children. Rather than merely regretting that par- ents have to “bear the burden” of talking to their children about Conclusion gun violence, such coverage proactively provides expert advice to The gun debate is about guns, but it is also about so much more. parents. One article, for example, consults licensed mental health Our lived experiences of gun violence are embedded in social counselor Linda Close to guide parents through the steps of practices and structures of inequality that fundamentally inflect talking to children about active shootings, encouraging parents to how we understand guns, how they impact us, and how we limit children’s exposure to news, to catalog and identify their imagine social change. At over 300 million circulating in the own emotions, to prioritize their children’s feelings, and to hands and households of Americans, guns comprise a core thread remind children that they are still safe—even if news reports of of US life, with gun owners and carriers turning to guns for gun violence of schools are rampant. Several of the guides protection and empowerment amid racial fears, feelings of

8 PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | (2019) 5:112 | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z | www.nature.com/palcomms PALGRAVE COMMUNICATIONS | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0320-z ARTICLE socioeconomic precarity, and anxieties about failing social insti- Carlson, 2019). As this analysis has shown, our imaginations are tutions (for more on the US gun context, see Carlson, 2015; perhaps limited by our social positions, with implications for how Filindra and Kaplan, 2016; Mencken and Froese 2017; Stroud, we can imagine policy solutions: even in the most intimate 2016). At the same time, tens of thousands of people in the US die relations between parent and child, certain acts—such as active every year by guns, impacting individuals not just in the after- shootings—are treated as quintessential cases of gun violence, math of violence but also—and perhaps more pervasively—in its whereas other acts—such as justifiable homicides—are addressed anticipation. This paper has focused on unraveling one piece of as issues of race, of which gun violence is one expression. As the social phenomenon of guns in the US—namely, how race sociologists, we are trained to ask how race and other lines of shapes trauma related to gun violence. We focused on two the- inequality shape arenas in which they appear to be putatively oretically illuminating landmark cases of gun violence—the 2012 absent. But to point out that “the Gun Violence Talk” is just as killing of Trayvon Martin and the 2018 Parkland Shooting—to much about race as “the Race Talk” is about gun violence is not develop some theoretical claims regarding gun-related trauma as just a sociological exercise. It is also a caution for policy-makers a structural and discursive phenomenon that impacts immediate to question popular understandings of what “counts” as gun victims and survivors and also broader communities that see violence—e.g., to question why assault weapons receive so much these heinous acts as intimating their own vulnerabilities to gun attention when handguns are involved in the vast majority of gun violence. In doing so, this paper examines trauma as a sociological violence—and to thus avoid creating policies that further divide phenomenon and argues that the conversations that parents of us in our experiences of gun violence. This paper, of course, diverse backgrounds undertake in anticipation of gun violence represents just small piece of this puzzle; we do not analyze how provide insight into anticipatory trauma as a racially inflected suicide, negligent shootings, and other distinctive kinds of gun experience. violence are embedded in structures of inequality through dis- Reading mainstream news accounts of parents’ responses to courses of trauma, but doing so would likely expand our gun violence, we suggest that there is no singular “Talk”; instead, understandings of not just the lived experience of gun violence in there are many Talks, differentiated along racial lines. Black the contemporary US context but also our capacity to create parents must prepare their children for interactions that may better solutions for addressing gun violence. become deadly due to their race, while white parents need not We close by emphasizing that as the statistics demonstrate, engage their children in a discussion of how their physical bodies traumatic death in the US is both a gun violence issue and a race may lead to them being disproportionately targeted for death. issue; not only do people in the US experience a heightened risk of Black parents feel that they must give their children “the Talk” gun violence as compared to other kinds of sudden traumatic because interactions with law enforcement and other potentially death, but these risks are structured by race, as well as class and violent actors are essentially inevitable; the only real choice made gender, inequalities. To the extent that how we anticipate gun available to them is at what age to give “the Talk,” rather than the violence narrows how we understand it as a social problem, we option of opting out of “the Talk” in favor of maintaining may also risk narrowing our imaginations as we struggle to childhood innocence. Only white parents are able to consider not address it, whether through the formal channels of policy craft- giving “the Talk” as a personal parenting choice. They do not work or the informal channels of parental carework. have to worry significantly about their children being racially stereotyped by law enforcement or other potentially violent actors; unlike Black children’s interactions with law enforcement, Data availability they can reason that school shootings, which they can imagine as See references for analyzed data in the form of news coverage. the only bodily threats to their children, are not inevitable or even particularly likely. Received: 26 June 2019; Accepted: 4 September 2019; As gun debates heat up, it is easy to see the dramatic difference between gun control and gun rights advocates: though both motivated by the problem of gun violence, they come up with wildly divergent conclusions regarding the significance of guns themselves. For the gun control side, guns are irrevocably the Notes problem; for the gun rights side, guns are the preferred solution. 1 The victims and parent and student activists from Parkland were generally This paper is interested less in the vociferous terms of the gun deracialized. This was the case, of course, until it became politically convenient to debate, and more in the everyday practices that parents undertake racialize them. One of the survivors and student activists who gained the most attention from the media was then-eighteen-year-old Emma González. When she amid a gun debate stalemate. These everyday practices, however, participated extensively in the gun violence prevention activism after the Parkland signal policy implications. They demonstrate that gun violence as shootings, supporters of gun rights attempted to use González’s heritage to discredit a social phenomenon in hearts and minds far exceeds gunshot her activism. González, who is Cuban-American, was publicly attacked by Republican wounds exacted on bodies. While we tend to debate the inter- Representative Steve King for wearing a Cuban flag patch on her jacket at the March section of mental health and guns as a law enforcement problem for Our Lives. Although the particular flag González wore was in no way associated ’ (i.e., how can we keep guns out of the hands of people experi- with Castro s dictatorship, King accused González of not understanding the history of Cuba and “’[ignoring] the fact that [her] ancestors fled the island when the encing mental health crises?), this analysis suggests the need for a dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, removing all weapons from its citizens; broader, trauma-informed conversation that highlights the effects hence their right to self defense’” (Oh, 2018). In contrast to the deracialization of Cruz, of gun violence on our mental health, emotional well-being, and the shooter, González’s ethnicity was strategically mobilized as a method of intimate relationships—even those relationships between parent discounting her experience with trauma that resulted from violence that was motivated and child. at least partially by white supremacy. At the same time, our analysis suggests that these effects are not monolithic but shaped by the racial contexts in which gun References violence becomes, if not inevitable, at least imaginable. In the US, Adamson B (2013) The racial self-policing that African-American men already do. race shapes who is most impacted by gun violence, how they are The Seattle Times. http://old.seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2021500612_bry anadamsonoped30xml.html impacted, as well as the social narratives that make sense of gun Alexander JC (2012) Trauma: a social theory, 1st edn. Polity, Malden violence, from the specter of the hyperaggressive black urban thug Al’Uqdah S, Adomako F (2018) From mourning to action: African American to the stylized trope of the troubled white school shooter (see, e.g., women’s grief, pain, and activism. J Loss Trauma 23(2):91–98

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Trawalter S, Hoffman KM, Waytz A (2012) Racial bias in perceptions of others’ Reprints and permission information is available online at http://www.nature.com/ pain, PLoS ONE 7(11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048546 reprints Turner C (2018) How to talk with kids about terrible things, NPR. https://www. npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/18/586447438/how-to-talk-with-kids-about- Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in terrible-things published maps and institutional affiliations. Washington J (2012) Trayvon Martin, my son and the Black Male Code. NBC News. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/46843826/ns/us_news-life/t/trayvon-martin-my- son-black-male-code/#.XJme0y2ZPUo Whitaker TR, Snell CL (2016) Parenting while powerless: consequences of “the ” – – talk . J Hum Behav Soc Environ 26(3 4):303 309. https://doi.org/10.1080/ Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons 10911359.2015.1127736 Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give Acknowledgements appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative This study was supported by a University of Arizona Faculty Seed Grant. The authors Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party ’ would like to thank Letta Page for her crucial assistance in wordsmithing. material in this article are included in the article s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory Competing interests regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from The authors declare no competing interests. the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. Additional information Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to J.C. © The Author(s) 2019

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